Ethical Decision Making in Autonomous Vehicles: The AV Ethics Project
- PDF / 1,307,925 Bytes
- 28 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 85 Downloads / 220 Views
Ethical Decision Making in Autonomous Vehicles: The AV Ethics Project Katherine Evans1,2 · Nelson de Moura1,3 · Stéphane Chauvier2 · Raja Chatila3 · Ebru Dogan1 Received: 21 November 2019 / Accepted: 30 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The ethics of autonomous vehicles (AV) has received a great amount of attention in recent years, specifically in regard to their decisional policies in accident situations in which human harm is a likely consequence. Starting from the assumption that human harm is unavoidable, many authors have developed differing accounts of what morality requires in these situations. In this article, a strategy for AV decisionmaking is proposed, the Ethical Valence Theory, which paints AV decision-making as a type of claim mitigation: different road users hold different moral claims on the vehicle’s behavior, and the vehicle must mitigate these claims as it makes decisions about its environment. Using the context of autonomous vehicles, the harm produced by an action and the uncertainties connected to it are quantified and accounted for through deliberation, resulting in an ethical implementation coherent with reality. The goal of this approach is not to define how moral theory requires vehicles to behave, but rather to provide a computational approach that is flexible enough to accommodate a number of ‘moral positions’ concerning what morality demands and what road users may expect, offering an evaluation tool for the social acceptability of an autonomous vehicle’s ethical decision making. Keywords Autonomous vehicles · Ethics · Decision making · Moral reasoning · Machine ethics
Introduction Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are shifting from prospect to imminent reality in the eyes of Original Equipment Manufacturers, government institutions, and the general public alike. As recent and somewhat grizzly events have revealed, this shift is not without risk, even as technology improves, accidents will continue to occur. The * Katherine Evans [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
K. Evans et al.
ethics of autonomous vehicles have thus quickly become a polemic subject, specifically in regards to the apparent pluralism of moral preference across a given society, and the so-called “social dilemma” of selecting a general decisionary maxim, even one as inoffensive as “minimise casualties” (Bonnefon et al. 2016). So, while the risks, vulnerabilities and dilemmas of the move towards autonomous driving have been identified, a practical, implementable solution must still be found. What steps are necessary to ensure the societal benefits promised by the advent of autonomous vehicles? An important part of the solution undoubtedly lies in the decision-making of the autonomous vehicle itself. A major assumption and popular talking-point in the autonomous vehicle debate is the AV’s eventual capacity to eliminate human error from the traffic environment: no more drunk-driving, texting, sleeping, or otherwise preoccupied dr
Data Loading...
